This tanka really spoke to me as it reminded me of when I taught ESL to adults.

I used to be…

This is one of the saddest things you hear immigrants or refugees say. Their identity is often based in the past, left behind in their country of origin....

Sometimes when students start to share personal details it is like the opening of a flood gate of thoughts and emotions. The use of the verb stretches is very apt here....

The other students listen in silence. There is no need for a teacher to impose silence on the class. They listen out of respect for their classmate. Perhaps they have had a similar experience. The silence is absolute, captured by the poet...

At the end of the tanka we are left in our dreaming room. What was his story? What is his future? ...

The language in this tanka is simple and concise.

The punctuation when it is used is very effective.

The ellipsis at the end of the first line suggests that the student pauses before he tells his story. It also invites the reader to focus on the student. The em dash at the end of the third line shifts the perspective from the speaker to the rest of the class.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Since I opened the pages of Being and Time, his words, "Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is," have lingered in the back of my mind for a week, like a silent check on my immigration dream: being a poet who can write in an adopted tongue and find his own way by moonlight.

At twilight, while walking on a wooden path around Lake Ontario, I hear the sound of the grass growing beneath my feet, and the air is filled with the scent of wild flowers. Just a stone's throw away, two seagulls take flight for the lake.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

first sunlightafter Valentine's Dayher heartbeating against minein a cheap motel roomher departing wordseach star has its own journeylinger with me...the mouth of darkness swallowsour summer stars and herin twilightrustling maple leaveshave a voicethat answers the stormI murmur, what am I?returned mailfrom my ex-girlfriendpiles up...flakes of thought driftingin a world of one colorNew Year's cleanup...finding her wadded-up braunder the bedat last I breathe inthe smell of her betrayal

Sunday, August 6, 2017

On the night before I left for Canada, Father said to me in a matter-of-fact tone, “The most valuable thing I’ve given you is your life. From now on, it solely belongs to you, and you’re on your own journey. My final words to you are that the life of your own should be spent this way: when looking back at it, you'll not have regrets of any wasted time or the failure to accomplish something significant."

deepening twilight …

once again I read

Basho’s death poem

Note: Historically speaking, Basho didn’t write the formal death poem on his deathbed, but the following haiku, being his last poem recorded, is generally viewed as his poem of farewell.

Selected Works of Chen-ou Liu

About the Poet

Born in Taipei,Taiwan, Chen-ou Liu was a college teacher,essayist,editor,and two-time winner of the national Best Book Review Radio Program Award.In 2002,he emigrated to Canada and settled in Ajax,a suburb of Toronto. Featured in New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, and listed as one of the top ten haiku poets for 2011(Simply Haiku, 9:3,4, Autumn/Winter 2011),Chen-ou Liu is the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Contest). His tanka and haiku have been honored with 101 awards,including First Prize Co-Winner, 7th and 8th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012; Tanka First and Third Places, 2011 San Francisco International Competition; Grand Prix, 2010 Klostar Ivanic Haiku Contest and First Prize Co-Winner, 2010 Haiku International Association Haiku Contest.

Broken/Breaking English: Selected Short Poems

My book is now available through Lulu.This collection of short poems is filled with themes of immigration, learning English, racialized identity, and a poet’s life struggles.

Following the Moon to the Maple Land

My book (First Prize Winner of the Spring 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) is now available through http://www.haikupix.com/ You are one of the most lyric haikuists in our worldwide haiku family. You have the gift of tugging at our hearts. I can see why so many of your haiku have won awards. -- Neal Whitman, renowned American poet

Ripples from a Splash

My book is now available through www.lulu.com [Liu's] haiku resonates the Asian spirit, and makes use of aesthetics in a continuum of time that is permanent and impermanent; the process more important than the subjective specificity of object bias found in most Anglo-Western haiku like poems. His poetry demand to be interpreted by the informed reader. They do not tell all, are not based on an “aha” moment, and have no definitive ending. More importantly they give meaning and voice to the unsaid, the magic inherent in Japanese poetry. -- Poetry Review by Robert D. Wilson, Editor-in-chief of Simply Haiku.

A New Resonance 7

A New Resonance 7: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts. I'm featured in this anthology and have 15 haiku included in it. This is the seventh volume in a series that has won the Haiku Society of America's Merit Book Award in each of its first six appearances.